For the Love of a Motherboard
by Connie Nervegas
Summary: Songfic. Don looks for love in the wrong place.


_For all those shy people like me who get really annoyed at people when they don't take a hint that you want to get rid of them. And because I think we give Don too much power. He's super smart, but he isn't all-knowing and he doesn't have access to every technological gadget ever invented. He's fifteen and lives in secret in a sewer. How advanced can he get? Thought I'd throw in a stereotypical Raph/ Leo argument for good measure._

_Song is "All is Full of Love" by Bjork._

Leonardo held the single nunchuck in his hand and it trembled with repressed anger. Raph snatched it away and strode down the alley with the gait of man sure of his impending victory.

"Raph, come back! What are you doing?" Leo called after him.

He yelled over his shoulder, "I'm going to find the bastard who did this and drive my sai through his fucking skull!"

Don ran after him. "Stop. We don't know what happened. Maybe he dropped it."

"See this blood!" Raph said, holding the nunchuck a few inches from Don's eyes. "It's Mikey's blood! It must be nice to have other things to think about…"

"Give it here, you ass." Don took the nunchaku out of Raph's hand and looked at it, scratching his head.

Leo put a hand on his shoulder, while watching Raph with narrowed eyes. "Can you tell if that's Mikey's blood?"

Don sighed and sniffed the nunchuck as if he were a bloodhound. They always expected him to pull answers out of thin air.

**You'll be given love****  
****You'll be taken care of****  
****You'll be given love****  
****You have to trust it****  
**

Don threw Mikey's nunchuck onto the infirmary bed and sat at the computer. He said to the computer, "You could use a defragging, couldn't you. Sorry I neglected you. I have to look for Mikey now though and I can't have you hogging runtime."

He sat at the computer for ten seconds and then heard Leo's voice ask, "So have you come up with anything yet?"

"I just sat down! Give me a minute!"

"He could be dead in a minute!" Raph yelled. There was a crash and a loud reprimand from Master Splinter.

Typical Raph. Throw things if you're insecure.

He wished Leo would leave. It felt like urinating with an audience, thinking in front of him. He didn't know what the big deal was anyway. Mikey had blood on his nunchucks all the time. It was unusual for him to drop one without noticing, but it didn't necessarily mean the he was lying face down in a puddle of his fluids or chained up in a lab somewhere.

Don pulled out his new motherboard for the computer. It was top of the line and he secretly slept with it under his bed the night before.

Electronics were so much better than brothers. They didn't insist on peeing in the shower when you in there with them. They didn't intentionally clock you on the head so that they could get a better piece of meat at the dinner table. They didn't pretend you'd been traded away for a television by your real parents when you were little. They didn't bleed to death in your arms.

**Maybe not from the sources****  
****You have poured yours****  
****Maybe not from the directions****  
****You are staring at****  
**

Raph's voice was quiet now. He had either disappeared or he was hitting the punching bag. At least he didn't have to deal with him right now. But Leo was still there, looking at a box of used spark plugs.

What should he do? He had no idea what he should look for. Confused turtles with missing nunchucks at the police station? Confessions of evildoing on the major news networks from their enemies?

And he'd intending on installing his new motherboard. It made it extra hard to concentrate on a half-assed rescue attempt when every other thought was of his new CPU and PSU wattage. 1000W. That was pretty good for a guy who lived in a sewer tunnel.

"What are you doing?" Leo asked.

Don opened a search page and stared at the screen. His instincts took him to the police station's encrypted website. No suspicious reports so far this evening. A man had tried to bake his cat in his oven, but nothing more suspicious than the usual.

"Why don't you go get some rest," Don said, eager to get his eyes off of his shell as he worked. "I'll call you if I find something."

"No, I need to stay alert. Maybe I'll think of something."

Don's skin was crawling with the desire to be alone. He almost turned around and screamed at him, ordering him to leave him alone.

**Twist your head around****  
****It's all around you****  
****All is full of love****  
****All around you**

No reports of weird green alien people at the hospital. So that was a plus. No news bulletins about green sewer men found. That was also a plus.

"Do you think he could have been taken by the foot?" Leo asked.

Don prepared for the chorus of "I don't know" that Leo liked to sing.

"What about Bishop?"

"I don't know. Do I look like I hang out with him?"

"I bet it was Karai…"

Raph was in the doorway. He said, "Leo, get lost. Leave him alone."

Leo stood up and said, in a voice that sounded a little like a challenge, "I am in charge here and I'm responsible for Michelangelo's safety. I will stay here until we find him!"

Don sighed. He knew that. He patted his motherboard and imagined how much faster the computer would load. He would be able to play three games at once. Not that he ever did that, but he could if he wanted to.

**All is full of love****  
****You just ain't receiving****  
****All is full of love****  
****Your phone is off the hook****  
****All is full of love****  
****Your doors are all shut****  
****All is full of love!****  
**

With a built in Nvidia card. That was okay. He was originally put off by the bundle because he wanted to pick his own card, but then he realized that the bundled parts were all a deal.

"I'm sure you spend all this time wringing your hands when I'm gone!" Raph was yelling. Lots of yelling tonight.

Don slipped on a pair of headphones and listened to Abba, but it wasn't enough to drown them out.

"How could I! I'd starve to death, you're gone so long!"

The card on the current motherboard was an ATI and he wasn't a big fan of AMD. He wondered how it would look. It had better make his Blue Rays look better than life with the money he'd had to save and beg from April.

"You're just trying to win points with Splinter! You kiss ass!"

Déjà vu. Hadn't Raph said that a few days ago? "Didn't you say that a few days ago?"

Neither answered.

Then he heard the front door slam and a familiar voice saying, "Okay, Leo, don't murder me, but I lost one of my 'chucks, but I think I know where I left it. I dropped it when that Purple Dragon tried to nut me. That poor sucker."

And there was Mikey. Standing in the infirmary doorway.

Raph pushed him aside, grumbling. Leo opened his mouth to lecture about the fear he had caused Leo and the panic turned anger that he had caused Raph…

But Leo was interrupted when a green blur whizzed past him and attached itself to Mikey's midsection. "You're alive!" Don said. "Thank God!"

Mikey patted his head. "Ain't I usually?"

Don spent the rest of the evening trying to play Monopoly, although one third of the pieces were missing and Raph kept trying to renegotiate with him and trade him his houses for Boardwalk. Mikey tried to cheat and everybody let him because they thought it was funny that he was so obvious. Leo was the banker and kept whipping out the rules and pointing at them when they questioned him. Don won. Then he stood up, pointed at them all and said, "I own you!"

He realized later that the motherboard had fallen off his lap and broken.


End file.
